For this year’s Paris Internationale we are excited to present works by Gerrit Frohne-Brinkmann and Josefine Reisch. Our presentation will include sculptural works by Gerrit Frohne-Brinkmann alongside new Birkin Bag paintings by Josefine Reisch. 

In Gerrit Frohne-Brinkmann’s works, which reside at the intersection of sculpture and performative art, robotic cats rest upon ceramic snakes – juxtaposing a faithful mode of representing the natural world with a technologically mediated depiction or fantasy thereof. The sculptural assemblage – a forced friendship of form, techniques, and species – can be understood as simultaneously futuristic (with an apocalyptic aftertaste) and prehistoric in its figuration and symbolism. In a semantic play, the titles of the individual works form pairings of the words Prop, Protagonist, Prey and Predator, injecting new meaning and disrupting familiar associations.

To question the value and validity of a popularized cultural “heritage”, Josefine reassembles historical moments and figures into jumbled compositions. Josefine challenges the patriarchal subjectivity of mainstream and material culture to undermine conventional artistic depictions of femininity. Her new paintings are of her deconstructed Birkin Bags, the most famous, expensive and most counterfeited handbag of our time. Originally designed for the eponymous actress Jane Birkin, the bag symbolises different notions of femininity: objectifying and emancipating. With her paintings, the artist questions the character of painting as a fashionable luxury object as well as the representation of the female subject in celebrity culture.